Brother
This is not my husband I am speaking of. This is another man who is in my life. He is confusing and not safe. He steps over lines, way over them. I don’t know what to do and it doesn’t matter because it is almost over. I want him to become someone else’s problem.
I don’t say anything because sometimes he tells me things I know he doesn’t tell anyone else, and I know he is lonely. He sometimes looks for friends because he can’t find one where it matters. He is trapped in the identity he constructed for himself. He swings wildly between being rigid and uncompromising and being this easygoing, bawdy person. I swing between feeling like his buddy to hating his guts. I remind myself everyday never to forget the things he has done in the past. He has stuck the knife in and twisted it more than once. He has driven me to tears on several occasions. Tears I make sure he never, ever sees. He enjoys pushing people’s buttons, and then doesn’t know quite what to do with himself when they get fed up. He never apologizes, as he is never wrong. And then he wonders why he’s so alone.
I don’t know if I am one of the guys or something else. I don’t know if this is friendship, if this is how we are, pretending on to be pious and segregated in one sphere, but secretly being friends and sisters and brothers like human beings want to be. He keeps saying he will miss me and I don’t know if he means it as a joke or if he says it like a joke because it is intolerable for men and women to be honest with one another in this religion and this society, and a joke is the only way one can say it. Sometimes I think I will miss him and sometimes I want to strangle him, and sometimes I just ignore him. My husband does not understand why I cannot deal with this person anymore.
Sometimes I understand why Salafis are against men and women working together, but the truth is that it isn’t men and women that are the problem, it is when people’s natural instincts to befriend and share with those who are like them are suppressed and repressed that those instincts become dangerous. It is when people are herded into what are, ultimately, unnatural situations that it becomes dangerous for a man and woman to be in an elevator together or shake one another’s hand. Because in the unnatural state of gender affairs that Islam has given us, everything, everything between an unrelated man and woman (or sometimes relatives – kissing cousins) becomes sexual. Everything becomes an opportunity for sexual behavior, and then, forever after, you view every interaction with a member of the opposite sex through that lens.
Not for a moment would I ever want to be this guy’s wife. Aside from the fact that I don’t believe in his religion, I don’t buy into his shaykh, and he is overbearing and obnoxious and intolerant of these sorts of things. He has said things that seriously freaked me out. His religion, our religion, teaches that we cannot be friends. Of course, one of his best friends is a non-Muslim woman. I guess that is different. When Islam forbids male/female friendship and shaking hands, it is called ‘preventing the means.’ But all it does is open up new means. Confused people, who don’t know what their relationships and feelings are, because they are too scared to call it friendship. Men who don’t know when to quit, because it is conditioned into them that every interaction with a woman has a feeling of seduction, of sensuality, of sex. He can be friends with her because she is not a Muslim. With her, he can be himself, whoever that self is.
When I was younger, most of my friends were men. Men I never had any relations with, beyond holding a hand. Men I did not entertain any notions about. I regarded their girlfriends with detached interest; they knew they had nothing to be jealous of. My boyfriends were always from the same social circles. We were friends first. I had a few female friends, but for the most part, my friends were guys. When I first started dipping my toes in the Muslim pool, I naturally gravitated towards men to explain things to me and give me the low down. They told me it wasn’t allowed for us to be friends. Over the years, I have made some really good female friends, but I still feel like I relate better to guys in some ways. Like most women I know, I never had any issues relating to men as friends or brothers. It’s not “Harry Met Sally.” That issue isn’t always hanging between you. Unless you’re Muslim I guess. Why does it have to get in the way of a good friendship and screw with the minds of otherwise capable adults?
Soon, he will be someone else’s problem. Soon, the issue of power will be eliminated between us, and there will a huge distance between us. There was never a danger of anything improper, ever, ever, ever. But the mere fact that this ridiculous friendship is forbidden is enough. He is confused, and he confuses me. I am glad to put distance between us. But I will miss him, in his own sad way.
